


house on a hill

by ameliafuckingshepherd



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, Avengers Family, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Falling In Love, Hollywood, Natasha Romanov Feels, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot, Parent Natasha Romanov, Parent Steve Rogers, Protective Natasha Romanov, Protective Steve Rogers, Romance, Slow Burn, Steve Rogers Feels, Undercover as Married
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-10
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:54:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23088124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ameliafuckingshepherd/pseuds/ameliafuckingshepherd
Summary: their location: hollywood californiatheir mission: take care of a superpowered babytheir feelings about each other: confusing(remake ofthis fic I wrote)
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Natasha Romanov
Comments: 29
Kudos: 127





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [damasc](https://archiveofourown.org/users/damasc/gifts).
  * Inspired by [golden slumbers](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17991920) by [ameliafuckingshepherd](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ameliafuckingshepherd/pseuds/ameliafuckingshepherd). 



> stay with me here! i wrote golden slumbers last year and upon reading it recently I wanted to write it again. I did this plot dirty. Ya girl fucked it up. here's to second chances!  
> (i left the old version up if you want to read it anyway...it's set in Louisiana so that's fun)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve and Natasha receive a mission assignment that takes them to sunny California.

“It’s...a baby.”

“No, I thought it was a watermelon.”

“Don’t sass me, Romanoff.”

“Then don’t say stupid things, Rogers.”

Fury slams his fist down on his desk. “Enough, both of you. We seized this kid from Hydra. We don’t know what she is or what they did to her, but they want her back.”

Natasha huffs. “What are we supposed to do about it?”

“You’re going undercover as Hillary and William Evans. There’s a jet waiting for you on the strip.”

“All due respect, sir, but we don’t know how to take care of a baby,” Steve says.

“Figure it out.”

“Ew, it drooled on me,” Natasha mutters.

* * *

Okay. The house is nice. But no mansion in the Hollywood hills can make up for the fact that somehow, Natasha has a baby now. A baby that is sleeping with her cheek on Natasha’s chest, getting spit on her leather jacket.

“What do we call her?”

Natasha looks at Steve, then at the baby. “Natalina.”

“No.”

“Natasha.”

“That’s just weird.”

“Anastasia.”

“Too Russian.”

“Fine, Rogers. You pick one out.”

Steve deliberates first a moment. “Petra.”

“And you think Anastasia is too Russian? Why Petra?”

Steve shrugs. “I like Jane the Virgin.”

* * *

Natasha orders groceries to the house. She’s so wound up she can’t even think about eating, but Steve’s super metabolism is demanding. Plus, Petra will have to eat. Maybe? What do babies eat? 

“Formula,” Steve says, and she can hear the smirk in his voice.

“What?”

“She’ll drink formula. Baby food, too.”

“How-”

“You’re not as hard to read as you think, Romanoff.”

* * *

There’s only one bed. Steve offers to take the couch. Natasha scoffs. “It’s a Cal King. We’ll share.”

He blushes, looks out the bay window. “I get nightmares.”

“So do I.”

“I kick, sometimes. I don’t want to hurt you.”

Natasha barks out a laugh. “You couldn’t if you wanted to.”

“Is that a challenge?” 

“I wouldn’t want to beat up a senior citizen.”

Steve takes her around the waist and lifts her above his head “Hows this for a senior citizen?”

Natasha screeches with laughter, halfheartedly trying to escape. But to be honest, human contact feels good, and he is...very warm. He sets her down. She allows her hand to stay around his neck, then trails it down his chest.

His heart is beating through his chest. His lips are parted and god, she can almost see sparks fly between them. She clears her throat. 

“It’s late.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you want to shower first?”

Steve shakes his head. “All yours.”

The thing is, Natasha doesn’t want to shower. Her skin tingles where he touched her, and she wonders why this is all happening now. They’ve known each other for years. They’ve shared beds, rooms, even toothbrushes. 

“Thanks. I’ll...probably wait until the morning,” she says, voice low. She clears her throat. “Which side of the bed do you want?”

Steve stares out the window. He seems haunted, and she is no stranger to ghosts of the past. Natasha stares at her hands—this moment seems too private to observe. Her prop engagement ring catches the light. She’s always loved things that sparkle. 

“It’s beautiful,” Steve says. His voice, too, is low and rough.

She looks at him, questioning.

“Your ring.”

“Thank you.”

He chuckles and sticks his hands in his pockets. “I should have brought my grandmother’s ring. It’s ruby set in gold, from the twenties.”

“I wouldn’t want to wear something so personal.”

“It would suit you. And I think grandma would have approved.” 

Natasha spends the rest of their first, very sleepless, night trying to figure out what the hell that means.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha likes playing games with Steve. Steve has trouble figuring out what perfume Natasha wears. Petra gets a bath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shorter chapters mean more updates! this writing style is somewhat inspired by the film "Matewan". The directing of the movie is short and to the point. They bring you into the scenes late and with little to no build-up to keep the viewer in the moment. I liked the style and wanted to try it out. NOT to mention that my writing is always cleaner when I write in shorter segments.
> 
> tldr: writing style based off the movie "Matewan", check it out, and I like writing short chapters

When Steve wakes up, the bed is empty. Just him, sweat covered sheets, and Natasha’s abandoned pajama pants. It seems they arrived just in time for a good old LA heatwave. A heatwave that Natasha seems to be combating by swimming in the pool. 

Steve makes his way downstairs and out back. The spy surfaces. “Morning, soldier.”

“Natasha,” he acknowledges, “How's the water?”

“Come in and find out.”

“Swimming isn’t my thing. But thanks.”

Natasha glides to the edge of the pool and pulls herself out. Steve finds Natasha objectively attractive, like anyone with eyes would, in her regular clothes. But she’s wearing his shirt. And it’s soaking wet. And clinging to her breasts in a way that leaves little to the imagination. He drags his gaze to the diving board, which all of a sudden seems very, very interesting.

“Come on, Rogers, play along. Have some fun. Loosen up.”

Steve doesn’t think he’s ever been tenser in his life. “Why are you wearing my shirt?”

“I didn’t pack anything,” She says as if that explains it. She climbs to her feet and slinks to the door, throwing a glance back over her shoulder. 

Steve, a deer in the headlights, is at a loss for words. Her underwear shows half her ass. And the fucking shirt is slicked to her back, where the water drips down her thighs. All he can say is, “Don’t track water everywhere.” 

She smiles devilishly and shuts the door behind her, leaving Steve, half-hard in his sweats, to unpack his most recent encounter with the Black Widow.

* * *

Natasha can cook better than he can, which is something. He asks, “How can you be good at everything?”

She replies, “I’m not. I just know how to pretend.”

She puts the steaming pancakes on the table. Petra reaches for them. Steve moves the plate closer. “This is...strange.”

Natasha hasn’t touched her food. Her hair is still damp, darker than usual, so her eyes seem lighter. She is silent, waiting for him to say more. 

“We aren’t used to this kind of thing.”

“No, Cap, we are not,” She says. She studies him, almost critically. 

“What, are you trying to read my mind?”

Her lips quirk, but her expression is otherwise locked down. “Something like that.”

* * *

Bath time is another thing Natasha Romanoff excels in. At eight pm, she fills the tub with four inches of warm water and washes Petra with a gentle hand. The baby shampoo smells like moringa. The scent mixes with Natasha’s perfume, filling the room with steam that smells like her skin. He can’t place the brand, it’s too diluted, but it smells familiar. 

It reminds him of how his mother’s bedroom smelled in the mornings. He would stand behind her at the vanity and crane over her shoulder, desperate to get a look at what she was doing. She’d paint mascara on her lashes and she’d say, _“Steven, it doesn’t matter if you have money or status. What matters is how you smell. You can tell a lot about a person by their perfume.”_

His nostalgic panderings come to an abrupt stop. Natasha is draining the tub and giving Steve a strange look. “What are you thinking about?” 

Steve bites his lip. “My mom.” 

“Do you miss her?” 

He looks up. Frowns. “Yeah. Wouldn’t you?” 

Natasha shrugs. “I don’t know. I’ve never had someone like that.” 

“Like what?” 

“A parent.” 

And because more often than not she is silent, Natasha wraps Petra in a towel and leaves the room. 

* * *

“Are you awake?” 

Steve rolls over to face her. “Yeah.” 

It’s well past midnight. He can hardly make out her face. 

“Good,” She whispers. Her breath is hot on his face. 

“Why?” 

She moves around, settles deeper into the mattress. “I’m glad I didn’t wake you up. You need your beauty sleep.” 

Steve chuckles. “I’m hurt.” 

“Hey, everyone needs it.” 

They’re close enough that he can feel the heat radiating from her body. “It's Chanel number five.” 

“What?” 

“Your perfume,” He says, suddenly embarrassed. “I was wondering what it was. I just figured it out.” 

“You could have asked.” 

“I didn’t want to come off as creepy.” 

“Please, Rogers, as if you weren’t eye-banging me this morning.” Heat rises to his cheeks. Natasha waits, silent and serious, for a few paralyzingly awkward heartbeats. Then she smacks his shoulder. “Jesus, I’m screwing with you. I wanted you to look at me.” 

Steve, weakly, asks, “Why?” 

“We’re alone here, posing as a couple, and you suck at pretending,” she explains, but it explains absolutely nothing, and he is just as confused. 

“So we don’t have to pretend.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i really wanted to have them kiss. I did. but this is tagged as a slow burn, and I am nothing if not a filthy liar, so fear not. it will happen soon! I wanted to draw it out...torture you guys more. thanks for reading!
> 
> oh, and since I'm under quarantine indefinitely (schools are closed and I'm high risk and my mom is Worried), I'll have a lot of time to write. my ADHD brain is going crazy already and it's day 2!!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha avoids Steve's proposition, Steve is jealous, and Natasha reveals that she can't have biological children.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> quick reminder that their undercover names are Hillary and William :)

Natasha isn’t sure what to say, so she keeps her mouth shut. Words hold meaning. If you don’t know what you want to say, then you shouldn’t talk. So she tries to go to sleep. Which is difficult when Steve is looking right at her, eyes so blue she can almost see the color in the dark. 

He drops off before her. 

She’s never been very good at sleeping. 

A jog sounds more appealing than sharing a bed with the most difficult person in the world. And the most attractive. 

Somehow, Los Angeles is even more awake at night. Talk about a city that doesn’t sleep. Natasha runs obsessively in circles around the street. She won’t go far. It probably wasn’t the best idea to leave the house at night, anyway. Warm wind cools her sweat. Across the street, a pomeranian shoves itself in a window and barks like Natasha is pissing all over its territory. 

“Hey, you new here?”

She pulls her earbuds out and stares down the guy on the sidewalk. “Yeah, we just moved in.”

He’s a tall, Terry Crews type. Probably spends more time at the gym than anywhere else. “‘We’ as in you and your brother? Hopefully?”

Natasha laughs. “I’m flattered, but that’s my husband.” She holds up her left hand. Then sticks it out to shake his. “I’m Hillary.”

“Pleasure to meet you. I’m Spencer.”

“Well, Spencer, what brings you outside on this fine night?”

“I saw a pretty lady alone in the dark.”

“Your protection is appreciated.” though not needed. 

“Why are you running in circles instead of sleeping?”

“I didn’t realize I was being interrogated.” She reaches up and undoes her ponytail.

Spencer looks away, almost abashed. “Sorry. I’m a cop. Force of habit, I guess.”

“Police? You seem more of a volunteer firefighter type,”  
She teases.

“How about you come over for some coffee and I’ll tell you all about my non-firefighting career history.”

Taking neighbor cop Spencer to bed seems...appealing. But the bedroom light is on, now, and Steve will get worried. “I better get back inside.”

“Right. Married. I forgot.”

Natasha smirks. “See you around, Spencer.”

“Yeah, see you.”

* * *

“You shouldn’t go out without telling me,” Steve says. The bathroom door is open just enough to reflect his disapproving frown in the mirror.

“And why is that?”

“It’s dangerous.”

“I’m dangerous.” 

“I’m serious, Natasha, what if that guy-”

“Spencer.”

“What if _Spencer_ was a Hydra agent looking for our kid?”

“She’s not ours, Steve,” Natasha says, coming out of the bathroom, hair half combed.

“You know what I mean.”

“Spencer wanted nothing more from me than sex.” Steve looks out the window. His shoulders are tensed like Natasha is about to hit him. “Which I didn’t give to him.”

“Why not?”

Natasha looks at him in disbelief. “Would you prefer I took him up on that offer? Should I go over to his house, knock on the door and say, ‘hey, my husband wants our secret mission to go down in flames, let’s fuck?’”

“Jesus, Natasha, no!”

“Then what do you want?”

_To shove her against a wall and kiss her until her knees go weak._

“I don’t know!”

“Figure it out.”

Natasha strides out of the room, leaving Steve upset, angry, though she hadn’t done anything wrong, and for some reason a little bit jealous.

* * *

Petra has taken a liking to Natasha.

“It’s weird. You’re warmer than me,” Natasha stews. She doesn’t seem to like children. 

“I am?”

She shoots Steve a glare like he was supposed to know that already. “You’re a super-human furnace. Sleeping in the same bed as you is unbearable.”

Steve groans. All day, she’s been unnecessarily harsh. Their argument (which was hardly even that because there was nothing to argue _about_ ) that morning got under everyone’s skin. Even Petra’s. To be fair, the tension between Steve and Natasha is practically tangible, and Petra is more tuned in that any other baby he’d ever met.

But still. He wants this all to go away. 

He should have kissed Natasha then and there. Gotten it over with. Gotten it out in the open. 

Petra reaches up from the spy’s arms to touch her hair. Maybe she likes the color red. Natasha pulls back. “Can you take her for a few minutes? I need some air.” 

“She’s happier with you.”

“She’ll live,” Natasha says. Before Steve can argue, she’s outside, and Petra is looking dejectedly at the back door. 

Perhaps the (kind-of) argument got to Natasha more than she’s let on.

* * *

She’s sitting on the diving board. Her feet don’t quite touch the water. 

“I put Petra down for a nap. How about we talk?”

“About what?”

“Come on, Hillary. You’ll hardly look at our baby.”

“For the last time, she’s not ours,” Natasha hisses.

Steve sits next to her, bumps his shoulder against hers. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I won’t say that anymore.”

“Thank you.” 

“Are you mad at me?”

“Why would I be mad at you, Will?”

“I shouldn’t have acted the way I did this morning. I got scared about someone hurting you.”

“I overreacted, too.” 

“Then why are you upset?”

Natasha tips her head towards the clear, palm tree decorated sky and says, just loud enough for Steve to hear, “I can’t have children.”

“Sure you can. Clint does, he just spends less time on work. You’d be a wonderful mother.”

“I can’t have children.”

“What, you’re infertile?”

“The KGB thought Red Room recruits were perfect test subjects for chemical sterilization. No possibility of pregnancy and no periods meant we could do whatever we needed to, whenever we needed to.”

“I didn’t know.”

“Save it. Because it’s fine. Seriously. It’s better this way. No distractions.” 

“But all this, this act, it isn’t easy.”

Natasha shakes her head. Her eyes flutter half-closed. The sun hangs low in the sky, casting a golden hew over the back yard. Light catches her eyes, and they glitter. Steve has spent enough time watching her when she’s not paying attention to be well acquainted with the color, but it still takes his breath away.

She takes his breath away.

“You could still adopt. Plenty of kids need homes.”

She laughs, though he doesn’t think he said anything particularly funny. “I can’t raise a kid on my own. Especially with this line of work. And unlike you, I don’t have a million people who would happily settle down and start a family with me.”

_She’s poisoned. Half a woman. Cold-hearted and covered in proof of all the heinous crimes Natalia Alinova Romanov has committed. Some days, being sterile feels like a punishment. She will never be normal. Just another thing to set her apart from the world when all she wants to be is like everyone else._

“If you’re referring to my die-hard fans, I wouldn’t choose any of them,” He chuckles.

“Why not?”

“Believe it or not, it’s kind of hard to find shared life experience.”

Natasha shrugs. “Make something up.”

“What, like you?”

“I don't know. The truth is a matter of circumstances, it's not all things to all people all the time. And neither am I.”

“You know, it’s kind of hard to trust someone when you don’t know who that someone really is.” 

Finally, Natasha raises her eyes back to his. “Then who do you want me to be?”

Steve brushes a lock of hair behind her ear, and if he didn’t know her better, he could swear she leaned into her touch. He should kiss her.

He wants to kiss her.

Her chapstick is cherry flavored. Will she taste like that? Or will she taste like the late afternoon coffee she finished half an hour ago?

He should just kiss her and get it over with. 

Before he can do anything stupid (or wonderful, he’s not sure which it would be), she kisses him. Maybe he should have read it in her face, the mutual desire, but he’s a little bit oblivious. And like everything else she does, it leaves him seeing stars.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *the “who do you want me to be” segment is stolen straight from the movie The Winter Soldier and I claim NO rights to it. I just like throwing some real lines in there.  
> now that we've gotten that out of the way, how did you like this chapter? Is it moving too fast? let me know in the comments and as always, thanks for reading! love you all. stay safe out there. xoxo
> 
> important: I am in no way implying that women who are infertile for whatever reason are any less of women. at all. you are equal to the rest of us and, if you choose to adopt or have children in another non-traditional way, will be no less of mothers.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha finally gets what she wants, Steve takes her in a date, and Petra falls asleep in the car.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello friends! I spend much of my childhood in LA, and I’m trying to get the luxury SoCal living across in this story. Check out [my Pinterest board](https://pin.it/3jjmsEe) for some visuals of the house, restaurants they might go to, outfits might wear, etc. :))

Natasha’s dead, and she snuck into heaven, and this is it. Kissing Steve Rogers has got to be the best thing in the world, better than drugs, better than sex, better than parachuting out a windows. Her body comes _alive_ and it’s like nothing she’s ever felt. For a moment, she doesn’t believe what she’s doing. Steve’s hand has moved up her back, resting in an infuriatingly respectful place. She wants him to pin her down and pull her hair and leave bite marks down her thighs, she’s waited too long to wait anymore. 

He pulls back first, and his pupils are blown wide. His mouth hangs slightly open. “Natasha…”

Fuck, her name is a groan on his lips. He’s going to kill her. “Upstairs”

He nods.

They leave a trail of clothes up the stairs and through the hallway. She pulls her shorts off and tosses them in the hamper, thanking her morning self for wearing the lace underneath. Steve stares at her from across the room. 

“What?”

“You’re gorgeous.”

She smiles, softly, and it’s rare. “Come here.”

With a light shove, he falls back on the bed. She climbs on top, and his hands finally go all the places she wants them to. 

By morning, black and blue fingerprints decorate her hips, bruises from his mouth painting the way from her neck to her navel.

* * *

“I should probably tell you something,” Natasha says over breakfast. 

“Yeah?”

“I’ve never had sex with someone I have feelings for before.”

“You have feelings for me?”

He looks so surprised, she almost laughs. “That’s what you‘re going to focus on?”

“Sorry. You’ve really never had a boyfriend?”

“Nope,” She says, and takes a sip of coffee. Steve leans across the table and wipes peanut butter off Petra’s cheek.

“Huh. And here I was thinking you knew everything.”

“I only pretend to know everything, Rogers.”

He makes the mistake of looking up at her, at her perfectly pink lips that an hour ago were still around his dick. “If it makes you feel any better, I haven’t slept with anyone since the 40s.”

“Seriously? No one?”

“I’ve had so much to catch up on, that wasn’t exactly at the top of my bucket list.”

“You’re pretty good in bed for a man in his seventies.”

Steve throws his napkin across the table, but she catches it before it hits her. “Nice try.”

“We should go out tonight.”

“Why?”

Steve shrugs. “I want to take you to dinner.”

“A date?”

“I want to do this properly, Tasha.”

“Do what properly?”

“Us.”

* * *

They’re lucky Petra is so well behaved, because Steve doesn’t think they could get away with a crying baby at this place. The restaurant he chooses is tucked into Beverly Hills, looking over the valley. Natasha, as usual, blends in perfectly, but Steve feels miserably out of place.

The place is made of glass and black marble with low lighting from vintage looking table lamps. It’s the kind of establishment Tony would undoubtedly love, but Steve is more of a locally owned cafe kind of guy. Natasha’s dress is dark green velvet. It hangs to the floor while diamonds drip from her neck like water droplets. She belongs here. It’s hard to look away.

She’s always been so much _more_ than him, more attractive, more skilled, more respected. It’s a wonder she tolerates him at all.

“Stop that,” She says. “Stop looking at me like that.”

“What do you mean?”

She frowns. “You’re acting like I’ll disapear. You can look away, I’ll be here when you look back.”

“Promise?”

She reaches across the table and takes his hand. Her skin there is softer than it should be for all the fighting she does. There ought to be callouses where she holds a gun and scars where she throws her punches. 

“Cross my heart and hope to die.”

* * *

Steve drives and Natasha sits shotgun. Petra sleeps in the back seat. Their Tesla speeds up the mountain roads. 

“Pull over,” Natasha commands. “I want to drive.”

“You’ve had too much to drink.”

“I can handle my alcohol just fine, let me drive.”

“No.”

“Fine, but I want to take you somewhere.”

* * *

They pull into an overlook high in the mountains. Natasha drags Steve to the edge. The city sprawls out below, and he finally understands why it’s called the city of stars. It looks like a galaxy, a galaxy which is reflected in Natasha’s wide eyes. 

“It’s beautiful,” he says.

She looks at him and grins. It’s a genuine smile. A gift. “Yeah.”

He brushes his hand across her cheek. She unpinned her hair in the car, and it falls in perfect, loose waves. He thinks she’s the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen. He leans forward and kisses her. She tastes like bourbon tonight. He’s always disliked hard liquor, but it’s marvelous on her lips. 

They sit there for a long time, looking over the glimmering valley. For the first time in his life, everything feels absolutely right.

“I think I like Los Angeles,” He says. 

She leans her head on his shoulder. “We should have run across the country with a Hydra baby five years ago.”

“You hardly knew who I was back then.”

She looks up at him. “From the first time I met you, I knew we were going to do great things.”

Steve presses a kiss to her forehead. She isn’t his wife. Petra isn’t his daughter. The house isn’t his home. But it feels real enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really like the idea of both of them very quickly falling for each other. For me, that’s sort of the magic of Hollywood. Anything feels possible. When I was a kid, my mom drove my brother and I up to an overlook in the hills. Seeing such a huge city from that far away makes you feel invincible.  
> On another (vent) note: I think I may or may not have a crush. Yeah, uh oh. I know she doesn’t feel the same way and I’m probably romanticizing things, but still, I’m hopeless.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve is tired and cute, the gang plans to visit, and Natasha worries about Bucky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is BAD.  
> No other way to describe it. It’s just fucking bad.  
> I haven’t updated in too long and I don’t want this fic to trail off like the first version, so here is a short filler chapter. It’s cute. I promise.

This is the honeymoon phase, Natasha thinks. The perfect utopia before everything goes to shit. The morning kisses and coffee in bed and days spent unable to leave each other's sides. 

It has to end soon. Nothing good hangs around her for long. It’s a little hard to feel sorry for herself when Steve is always a foot behind her, calling her beautiful or kissing her or playing with her hair. It makes her feel like a woman for the first time in her life. 

It’s difficult to be negative under the California sun. She’s tan now, actually tan. Her legs look longer and her muscles seem more toned. She catches Steve admiring her more—though there’s a chance he just doesn’t mind showing it anymore. She loves the attention. 

She’s finished swimming her morning laps in the pool before the sun comes up. It’s just a glow in the horizon. The neighborhood is still quiet, except for the few people already going to work. She throws on a beach coverup (white linen) and lays back on a lounge chair, tapping a text message to Clint. He’s probably still asleep, but he can reply when he wakes up. 

The door slides open and Steve slips out into the dawn, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “Morning,” he mumbles.

“You’re up early.”

He wedges himself on the chair beside her and lawns down, looping his arms around her waist and burying his face in her stomach. She combs a hand through his hair. If ever morning was like this one, she wouldn’t mind. 

“Petra needed a new diaper. She’s asleep again.” 

His breathing grows heavy within a minute. Natasha raises her phone and snaps a picture. It finds its way to her lock screen. The six in the morning flights departing from LAX paint ribbons across the sky. A year ago, Natasha would have longed to be on one of those planes to Haiti or Costa Rica with a suitcase full of bikinis and sandals. Shield has taken her around the world, but she always longed for an adventure with no mission objective. Now, this feels like her adventure.

The most exciting part of every day is her evening glass of wine. She drives an SUV. Steve reads the newspaper at breakfast. She is officially boring. Looking down at her husband, boring seems pretty okay.

* * *

Clint says he, Sam, and Bucky are thinking about coming to visit in a week or two. Natasha is in desperate need of an actual parent to tell her what to do, so she happily agrees, though Clint isn’t the one she’s worried about.

It was the Winter Soldier who shot her, not Bucky. He’s apologized probably a thousand times and he’s so important to Steve that she knows she should just _trust_ him, but this is her kid on the line. Bucky would never hurt Petra, not in a million years. She isn’t completely confident that Bucky is the only person left in that body. Of course, she would never voice these concerns to Steve.

He trusts Bucky more than anyone in the world, more than her, so that should be enough. 

And the way Steve’s face lights up when she tells him about their anticipated visit makes everything else melt away. 

That night, he kisses the trio of scars on her stomach. 

“I would never put you in danger, Natasha.”

“I know.”

“I wouldn’t let him near you and Petra unless I was one hundred percent sure the Winter Soldier was gone. I promise.”

“I know.”

“He still makes you nervous.”

She meets Steve’s eyes over her body and frowns. “I don’t know him like you do. And he shot me three times.” Steve opens his mouth to say something, most likely in Bucky’s defense. She cuts him off. “But I trust you, so I trust him.”

He presses kiss below her navel. “I wish you could have met him before all this.”

“I know, милый,” she says, and reaches to cup his cheek in her hand. “I'm glad he’s going to visit. I have seventy years of forced friendship to make up for.”

“I’ll have to warn him that the Black Widow wants to be friends,” Steve chuckles. “You’ll probably haze him.”

“I was thinking about an elaborate series of tests to prove his worthiness.”

“How about an obstacle course?” 

“I’d like to see that. Can he do gymnastics?”

“Only one way to find out,” Steve chuckles. “But we should get some sleep so we have energy to form our evil plans.”

“They aren’t evil, they’re friendly! Friendship plans!”

“Everything is an evil plan with you, Tasha.” He settles himself next to her and kisses her cheek. 

“That is _so_ not true,” she protests.

“Hush, you’ll wake the baby.”

The next morning, his coffee is made with salt instead of sugar.

Fine. Some of her plans are evil.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> —if you put милый in google translate, it says it means ‘nice’. It actually means ‘honey, darling, sweetheart, love,’ etc. you get the idea.  
> —I have a depressing romanogers fic up (“speaking terms”) and a fluffy one shot (“New Years eve”) if you’d like to head to my profile and check those out :) for anyone confused by this website, at the top of this fic it says my username. If you click on that it should take you to my dashboard, where you should click on ‘works’. Boom, there’s all my stuff. Please give me attention. I need it desperately. And I’ve been on here since 2017 and I still get confused, so no judgement if you have trouble w/ ao3.  
> —also, please tell me what you want to see in this fic next!! I wanna write what you guys want to see (within reason). The one things I can’t write is porn. I am so bad at it and I have no idea why. I just really can’t write sex scenes. At all. It’s a mess. If you want some good romanogers graphic content, I think I’ve got a few bookmarked. Or hit me up and I can send some links ;)  
> —thank you for all the kind comments!!! I don’t really address each one individually unless it warrants a response, but I read each of them obsessively and thrive off your praise! 
> 
> Thanks for reading, love you all, stay safe. xoxo


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